My daughter and her husband bought us to its Chinatown place (original) a while back and we we liked it a lot. It was small and busy but it has a great reputation and attracted a loyal clientele, including a few very famous ones.

Their Flushing location is bigger and newer and it was equally busy. Its “红油抄手“ or ”wontons in red pepper oil“ was the best I’ve ever tried. You have to try them yourself!

Cold weather is coming and their food is perfect for that.

BTW, may be you can come up with an alternative to that “second to the last” sentence.

I would very much like to see how the Chinese government can pull this unprecedented social engineering experiment off. The new leaders of China probably want to try this out in stages starting in one or two new cities at a time so that there won;t be a huge upheaval at the same time.

Social engineering of the nth order!

I have been back to my hometown which is still a small farming village with about 20 families still living there. Many of the next generation have moved away to where the jobs are after they had a chance to finish various levels of education. There are still many who choose to stay. it is difficult to see how they will take this kind of order from the top if they are told to move. I think the younger generation will do it without government’s order because the pay is better and the opportunities are there if they try.

This kind of projects will take tons of money which China can still afford. It will take years if not decades to carry it out. If successful, by no means guaranteed, China will have a chance to move itself out of the middle income trap.

The details are coming out soon. I like to see how they plan to do it.

This was the first time we ventured out of that area and found Level along the West Street.

We liked it a lot and you might want to try it someday when you are here in Annapolis.

The restaurant was quite busy and a couple of large parties kept our waiter very busy. The hostess and sommelier helped out with bringing the plates to our table. The bus boy, who was on his first day of work, helped to take the plates away. The dinning room was quiet even though we had five tables at the same time on a Sunday evening.

Our meal went through smoothly and our waiter was polite, professional and courteous.

A great experience.

Tender, juicy and right amount of seasoning.Medium rare. Great selection. I pat myself on the back.

The magazine was talking about Taiwan’s two tech companies: 宏碁 Acerand 宏達電 HTC。

I own an Acer laptop since 2011 and liked it a lot. It’s cheap and performs as well as comparable products from Dell and HP. Although I have used Apple iPhone3 and have recently switched to Samsung’s Galaxy S4, I heard that HTC’s phones are equally good.

That being said, these two companies’ stocks can only be described as 惨不忍睹。

See for yourself:

My first answer is: 台湾的顶尖人才都跑到中国大陆去了。台湾的教授也跑到中国大陆去了。Pay there is better。Period。台湾, in a way, 被别人从上面和中间掏空了。The majority of businesses staying put in Taiwan are service oriented: restaurants, massage shops, travel related companies, night markets and taxis.

My second answer is: 爸爸（国民党）和妈妈（民进党）天天吵架，家里的小孩（台湾的人民和公司）这么能长的好呢？Both parties are fighting hard to strengthening their own party. They are not working for the people. They are working for their party instead.

My third answer is：台湾的教育失败。See for yourself：

My fourth answer is:台湾’s problems are structural in nature. Taiwan has been very good at putting things together for other companies. It may have slacked behind on fundamental researches which are very critical in the highly competitive technology space. The central government has been throwing money in the area of social welfare to please the voters for years. By doing so, it didn’t do what it supposed to do: helps Taiwan’s businesses compete with other companies in the world which enjoy total support from their respective governments.

Taiwan’s current leader,马英九, has over the past six years been fighting for the survivor of his political life. He lacks the vision to help companies such as Acer and THC and is powerless under the constant attack from the opposition party. He hasn’t shown any leadership quality and is mired in a dismal approval rating of low teens.

My fifth answer is：The CEO of both companies probably have squandered their respective company’s good fortune, became lazy at the top and didn’t adapt to the changing landscape. Once they starts to play catching up, their technological advantages were gone. We call this： 创业维艰守成不易。

If something is not done fast, both companies, along with hundreds of jobs, will by gone soon.

It is rumored that the Chinese government has accumulated more than 7,000 tons of gold since 2009. the central government also encourages Chinese citizens buy gold on the open market. Panda gold coins has been a popular collectors’ item since 1982. Ads like this one are very common at gold and jewelry stores in Shanghai.